Journal Zero » Events

My Kind of Town

Posted on April 30th, 2010 by Anthony van Winkle

Night Zero has been busy busy busy these past few weeks, so the blog has had some time off but I’m back and eager to tell about some of the exciting things we’ve been doing. Most significantly, two weeks ago we had our first “away show” at the first annual Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, colloquially marketed as C2E2. We brought our famous free HDR photobooth, as seen at ECCC and Crypticon, to capture Chicagoans in their post-apocalyptic zombie-hunting best. If you were at the show and missed the email, the booth photos can be found here.

Chicago being Night Zero’s first foray outside the Emerald City, I was fortunate to have a good friend from the theater community who lives over there, providing a couch to crash on and a home base from which to command the NZ-C2E2 operation. The first step was to get the books back to the Midwest, coincidentally not far from where they were originally printed and bound, so in advance of my arrival a FedEx truck delivered a series of boxes containing the first two volumes of our zombie apocalypse.

I arrived in Chicago on Wednesday evening before the show, and met my friend Danniel for dinner and drinks. Thursday morning, he went off to work and I figured out the bus/train/foot route down to the McCormick Place convention center and walked the space to get a feel for our setup. Running a booth that invites attendees in for photos, while maintaining a space to talk about and sell books, all while not breaching our 10′x10′ area… it’s a tricky problem, and one that can’t really be addressed until the feel of the floor is felt out. Once satisfied, I walked to a cafe to get some lunch and draw up the booth layout, then set off to transport the real stuff of the Night Zero experience.

I recently signed up for the Zipcar vehicle-sharing service in Seattle, and fortunately it’s a nationwide network so I had easy short-notice access to cars all over Chicago. I found a suitable spacious ride and drove up to Wrigleyville to pick up the booth, which was a slightly challenging endeavor since I was new to Chicago and a Cub’s game was about to start, but I made it in good time and Danniel was there with some guys to help me load the books, lights, and gear into the car so I could head back down to McCormick and offload into the space. The convention offered a free “lend-a-hand” service for move-in, so I was able to drive right into the expo hall and have all our crates loaded to a forklift that drove them to our booth space. In no time at all, I had the Zipcar back in its spot and was walking back to McCormick.

One of the many things I really appreciate about our hometown show ECCC is how much is provided as a courtesy for exhibitors. Not only did C2E2 charge us extra for a corner space for our booth (essential for the aforementioned photobooth flow), but “renting” tables and chairs were all extra (and exorbitant) charges for what should be complimentary equipment. We couldn’t work without them, though, so I begrudgingly dropped the cash to get two small tables at our space, and set about hanging our banners and backdrops, experimenting with light and camera positioning, and decorating the tables with photos from our various shoots.

Thursday was a wonderfully warm day in Chicago, so after the booth setup I took some time to wander around town, grab some dinner, and take in some sights before returning home for some beers on the stoop with Danniel. Friday morning was the “professionals only” portion of the show, so while we had to be there early to setup and run the booth for the attendees, it was a slow period that I used to train Danniel and his friends Mark and Ben on how to oversee the photobooth flow, operate the camera/lights, and handle the cash transactions. Emily, the marketing director for Night Zero, flew in Friday morning and met us at the convention. She immediately took to work meeting professionals, moguls, and comicshop owners, beginning the networking-side of our C2E2 mission. As the morning turned to afternoon and the show opened to the general public, the costumed fans and comicbook folk started to trickle in, and by the end of the day we were running a full-scale operation to match our first ECCC appearance.

Saturday and Sunday followed suit, with Sunday being a slower convention day but nevertheless keeping us busy with talking about our unique project and taking photos. As the show wrapped up, we packed in the camera gear and took down the signage, but generally left it all behind to go have a relaxing dinner and post-mortem on the weekend’s events. Monday morning, I packed up everything from the house and went down to McCormick to consolidate my personal luggage with the booth gear, leaving a nice neat pile of boxes and crates while I went to find another Zipcar. Load-out was as easy as load-in, and I conveniently chose a Zipcar whose parking space was but a half-block from the subway station to take me back to the airport and to my uneventful flight home.

All told, the show was a mixed bag. In the short term, it did not perform as well for us as our local shows, perhaps because of the rough economy or perhaps we’re more dependent on our “local” appeal than we expected. Suffice to say, the revenue from book sales was negligible compared to our expenses for taking the trip, which doesn’t bode well for future traveling booths. In the long term, much remains to be seen, but thanks to Emily’s networking and marketing, we may have some expanded reach and possibly a distribution deal to get Night Zero out into the world. If those pan out as well as we work to make them, the extended returns on C2E2 may yet turn out in our favor.

Our next scheduled appearance is at the 2010 horror festival of Crypticon Seattle, hosted the weekend of June 18th-20th, so if you’re in the Seattle area make sure to come on by. We’ll be doing our free HDR photobooth right next to the amazing Doug Jones, and who can say no to that?

A comicon before it's a comicon

Decorations, lights, and books books books

An hour spent just moving tripods around to find the best fit

Do you like our table? $80 for three days.

Our first visitors of C2E2

The view from our booth

Ben, Mark, and Danniel, badasses

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Voices from ECCC

Posted on March 26th, 2010 by Anthony van Winkle

A great thank-you the thousands of fans who came by to visit at the Emerald City Comicon this year. The Night Zero team had a great time meeting fans new and old, applying free makeup effects, shooting in the HDR photobooth, and sharing the joy that is what we do.

For those who missed the email or missed ECCC 2010, the Night Zero photobooth gallery can be found at Night Zero’s Flickr page.

Below are some words from the team members who were at the show, sharing their thoughts of the crazy, incredible weekend.

KELLY OTA

I was only there the first day, and I don’t know how much we sold, but I loved that by noon, Anthony had to rush home to grab a second box of Volume One books, and by the time he got back, we also sold out of the Special Edition Volume Two Survival Packs. I feel like in the year since we first went to ECCC, Night Zero has not only become more known as a local business, but also much more popular. It was exciting to sell so many books to so many people that were excited about Night Zero!

KATRINA HAMILTON

I talked to so many people at ECCC, it wasn’t long before I couldn’t keep track of the conversations. People would come by that I recognized but I couldn’t remember if I talked to them last year or that morning. At one point I actually stopped in the middle of a sentence, looked up at the woman I was speaking to and said, “I already told you how HDR works, didn’t I.”

Many of you may not know that Alexander Theoharis, a writer for Night Zero and the man most likely to say “Do me a favor and hold this?” while handing you a gun, is also a lawyer. Alexander was in charge of helping people in and out of the photo booth, as well as offering them the guns and/or girls of their choice. Halfway through Day One I expressed to Alexander that all of the power he has as an attorney doesn’t seem to make him nearly as happy as the power to yell “Babes!” and have girls literally run towards him.

One of my favorite moments of the convention was a guy who came over to the booth during the later half of the day and told us how great he thought Volume One was. I asked him where he had heard about Night Zero and he told me that he had just bought the book from us less than an hour ago. He had been walking around the convention reading his copy of Night Zero, and was already a fan.

I still can’t get over how good Indiana Jones looks in HDR.

JANA HUTCHISON

Last year, our makeup area was separate from the rest of the Night Zero crew by (what felt like) a great distance. It was a blast and we learned so much, but the main booth area was simply not large enough to contain us all! That was our first attempt at offering this fun experience to the public, and it was a definite success, but we struggled to tie-in the makeup with the Night Zero brand.

Since that first booth, we’ve taken our makeup to Crypticon, helped break the zombie world record with Fremont Outdoor movies and created zombies for a Shawn of the Dead event down in LA. We zombified or killed nearly 100 extras for the big downtown protest shoot that you’ll start to see next month, and over the last year our setups have ranged from just me with my own little kit and a chair to a freestanding tent with four professional makeup artists. All this in addition to the small but demanding shoots that Night Zero does every single month.

This year at ECCC, I was elated to be at the main booth. The energy and support and fun in our space was palpable, and we were mobbed the entire show… I was fortunate enough to have the help of a professional makeup effects artist, Anne Sellery. Side by side, we gored or zombified over 120 people through the course of the show. Having had hundreds of people in my makeup chair since that first ECCC really changed how we approached each person, and I’m still proud that we don’t do “canned” makeup effects. Everyone is a great sport, often waiting in line 45-60 minutes to get in the chair. Some of my favorites (and this was true last year) were the whole families that wanted to be bloodied. Parents would become zombies, kids would become battle-scarred warriors, then they’d go get (what I hope is) their Christmas card photo taken at our famous HDR photo booth.

We always love to hear stories of your convention experience and what happened when you left the convention center all dolled up in blood and bruises, so please send us pictures and stories or leave them in the comments below!

ELI BLACK-MIZUTA

Saturday I took one five minute break at about 4:00. I ate lunch with one hand while taking pictures with the other, and by the end of the weekend I figure I’d photographed (counting group shots) probably in excess of 1,500 people. You guys were all awesome… though I’m concerned by the number of people who, when handed a gun, immediately pointed it at either their head or their friend. In the event of the apocalypse, we’re all going to die.